Oppyouthies: Your youth and Your opportunities

Oppyouthies: Your youth and Your opportunities

The United Nations define youth as persons under the ages of 15 and 24. First, let’s calculate how youth are you? ___ no. of years you have been youth, starting from 15 years till date.

Formula:

N yrs*365 days*24 hrs*60 minutes= _________ minutes youth old.

Very rarely would have you realized the time you have spent in your youth, so just take a minute and think of what have you done significant enough in your youth till date that you are proud of and can gloat about or are you of the view that you were busy and had no time or no circumstances good enough to do something remarkable. Time flies and you do not even come to know when it flew. So think again is it really true, whatever reasons you have given for the above question, was it such an obstacle you could not tackle? Or was it mere laziness like I have observed in many youths including me sometimes that hindered you from answering that question with pride.

Answering the question; it might sound simple but the practice is far from it. For me the best way was to get involved in social clubs, Leo Club as a matter of fact for me. Breaking the chains of laziness is definitely not an easy task; it requires identifying your interests and challenging your persistence. I say social clubs here not to develop society first but to use social clubs as a tool to develop yourselves by exposing you to myriads of problems, issues, interests and solutions lying in our society. My simple concept here is you develop yourself, the society will develop itself. A social youth club, LEO which stands for Leadership, Experience and Opportunity was the tool for change for me. It gave me an open platform, an opportunity to take leadership, a chance to test my capabilities, freedom to make my own mistakes and to experience and know myself.

The thing to understand here is, this opportunity that I am talking about is everywhere, in your community, social clubs, youth clubs, colleges and your own student’s council and clubs at college. You do not require a third eye to find the opportunity; you just have to open it. Opportunity to utilize yourself is within you, hence it does not knock just once or twice, it is in fact banging your door every now and then to come out of you but it’s our laziness that end up giving these opportunities deaf ears.

Youth and Opportunities are two most compatible choices that come in our life. Use your youth to gain those opportunities or waste your youth to lose those opportunities, either way the choice is yours. Bill Gates would not have been The Bill Gates if he had not invested his youth; at the age of 17 working with computers instead of dating girls. Justin Bieber would not have been the youngest solo artist to perform at the busiest music arena in the world, Madison Square Garden, if he had not devoted almost all of his time in singing and performing at every radio stations and promotional campaigns instead of chilling out like most youth of his age. So stop updating your facebook statuses about how bored are you, stop raising you phone bills for parents to pay, try the blind side- start burning fats and give your brains a little practice, start getting involved, be an opportunist. Give your talents the opportunity to come out, give your ideas an opportunity to happen, give your mistakes an opportunity to learn, give yourself an opportunity to be the person that you can. Do not hover around arguing whether the glass is half full or empty like a pessimist or an optimist, instead grab it and drink the water as an opportunist. Explore and feel the change that you can; Be a true LEO: the one toLEAD yourself, EXPERIENCE yourself and OPTIMIZE yourself.

The trick is not to be a member of THE club, but to be The member of a club.